The Age of Reason (8 page)

What bet? He passed his hands over his eyes, now wearied by the light: he no longer really knew: he was subject — more and more often now — to long moments of exile. To understand his bet, he had to be feeling exceptionally alert.

‘Ball, please.’

A tennis ball rolled up to his feet, a little boy ran towards him racquet in hand. Mathieu picked up the bail and threw it. He was certainly not particularly alert: he sweltered in that depressing heat, he could do no more than submit to the ancient and monotonous sensation of the daily round: in vain he repeated the once inspiring phrases: ‘I must be free: I must be self-impelled, and able to say: “I am, because I will: I am my own beginning.”’ Empty, pompous words, the commonplaces of the intellectual.

He got up. An official got up, an official who was worried about money and was going to visit the sister of one of his old pupils. And he thought: ‘Are the stakes all set? Am I now just an official and nothing more?’ He had waited so long: his latter years had been no more than a stand-to. Oppressed with countless little daily cares, he had waited: of course he had run after girls all that time, he had travelled, and naturally he had had to earn his living. But through all that, his sole care had been to hold himself in readiness. For an act. A free, considered act; that should pledge his whole life, and stand at the beginning of a new existence. He had never been able to engage himself completely in any love-affair, or any pleasure, he had never been really unhappy: he always felt as though he were somewhere else, that he was not yet wholly born. He waited. And during all that time, gently, stealthily, the years had come, they had grasped him from behind: thirty-four of them. He ought to have taken his decision at twenty-five. Like Brunet. Yes, but at that age one doesn’t decide with proper motivation. One is liable to be fooled: and he didn’t want to act in that way. He thought of going to Russia, of dropping his studies, of learning a manual trade. But what had restrained him each time on the brink of such a violent break, was that he had no
reasons
for acting thus. Without reasons, such acts would have been mere impulses. And so he continued to wait...

Sailing-boats sped over the Luxemburg pond, lashed from time to time by falling water from the fountain. He stopped to look at the miniature regatta. And he thought: ‘I’m no longer waiting. She is right: I have cleared myself out, sterilized myself into a being that can do nothing but wait. I am now empty, it is true, but I am waiting for nothing.’

Near the fountain, a little boat was in distress, and a laughing crowd looked on as a small boy tried to rescue it with a boat hook.

M
ATHIEU
looked at his watch. ‘Twenty to eleven; she’s late.’ He did not like her to be late, he was always afraid that she might have inadvertently died. She forgot everything, she evaded herself, she forgot herself from one minute to the next, she forgot to eat, she forgot to sleep. One day she would forget to breathe, and that would be the end. Two young men had stopped beside him: they eyed a table with a disdainful air. ‘Sit down,’ said one, in English.

‘I will,’ said the other: they laughed and did so. They had delicate hands, hard faces, and smooth skins. ‘Lousy little beasts,’ thought Mathieu irritably. Students or school lads: young males, surrounded by grey females, looking like glittering, insistent insects. ‘Youth is fantastic,’ thought Mathieu: ‘so vivid on the surface, but no feeling inside it.’ Ivich was conscious of her youth, and so was Boris, but these were exceptions. Martyrs of youth. ‘I never knew I was young, nor did Brunet, nor did Daniel. We were only aware of it afterwards.’

He reflected without much pleasure that he was going to take Ivich to the Gauguin exhibition. He liked to show her fine pictures, fine films, and fine things generally, because he was himself so unattractive; it was a form of self-excuse. Ivich did not excuse him: that morning, as on all occasions, she would look at the pictures with her wild, maniacal air: Mathieu would stand beside her, ugly, persistent, and forgotten. And yet he would not have liked to be good-looking — she was never more alone than when confronted with something to admire. And he said to himself: ‘I don’t know what I want from her.’ At that very moment he caught sight of her: she was walking down the boulevard beside a tall, shiny-haired young man in spectacles, she raised her face to his, and offered him her brilliant smile: they were deep in animated talk. When she saw Mathieu, the light went out of her eyes, she parted from her companion with a brief good-bye, and crossed the Rue des Ecoles with a drowsy air. Mathieu got up: ‘Glad I am to see you, Ivich.’

‘Good morning,’ said she.

Her face was largely hidden by her fair curls, which she had brought right forward to her nose, and her fringe reached down to her eyes. In winter the wind blew her hair about, and exposed her large, pallid cheeks, and the low forehead that she called ‘my Kalmuck forehead’ — revealing a broad face, pale, girlish, and sensual, like a moon between clouds. Today Mathieu could see no more than an artificially narrow and ingenuous countenance which she wore like a triangular mask over the real one. Mathieu’s young neighbours eyed her: they were obviously thinking: What a pretty girl. Mathieu looked at her affectionately: he was the only one among all those people who knew that Ivich was plain. She sat down, composed and gloomy. She was not made up, because make-up spoiled the skin.

‘And what will Madame have?’ asked the waiter.

Ivich smiled at him, she liked being called Madame: then she turned to Mathieu with a hesitant air.

‘Have a peppermint,’ said Mathieu, ‘you know you like it.’

‘Do I?’ she said with amusement ‘All right. What is it?’ she asked, when the waiter had gone, ‘It’s green mint.’

‘That green, gluey stuff I drank the other day? Oh, I don’t want that, it makes my mouth all sticky. I always take what I’m given, but I oughtn’t to listen to you, we haven’t got the same tastes.’

‘You told me you liked it,’ said Mathieu, rather irritably.

‘Yes, but then I remembered the taste.’ She shuddered, ‘I’ll never touch it again.’

‘Waiter!’ cried Mathieu.

‘No, no, never mind, he’ll bring it, and it’s nice to look at. I won’t touch it, that’s all: I’m not thirsty.’

She said no more. Mathieu did not know what to say to her: so few things interested Ivich: besides he didn’t feel like talking. Marcelle was there: he could not see her, he did not utter her name, but she was there. Ivich he saw, he could call her by her name or touch her on the shoulder: but she was out of reach, with her frail figure and her fine, firm throat: she looked painted and varnished, like a Tahitian woman on a canvas by Gauguin, and not meant for use. Sarah would be telephoning very soon. The commissionaire would call out, ‘Monsieur Delarue’. And Mathieu would hear a dark voice at the end of a wire: ‘He won’t take a penny less than ten thousand francs.’ Hospital, surgery, the reek of ether, money difficulties. Mathieu made an effort and turned towards Ivich; she had closed her eyes, and was passing a finger lightly over her eyelids. She opened her eyes again: ‘I have the feeling that they keep open by themselves. But I shut them now and again when they get tired. Are they red?’

‘No.’

‘It’s the sun. I always have trouble with my eyes in summer. On days like this one oughtn’t to go out until it gets dark: otherwise one gets into a wretched state, the sun pursues you everywhere. And people’s hands are so clammy.’

Mathieu felt the palm of his own hand under the table: it was quite dry. No doubt the tall shiny-haired young man had clammy hands. He looked at Ivich without emotion: he felt both remorseful and relieved because he was less attracted by her.

‘Are you annoyed because I made you come out this morning?’

‘I couldn’t have stayed in my room, anyhow.’

‘Why not?’ asked Mathieu in astonishment.

Ivich looked at him impatiently.

‘You don’t know what a woman students’ hostel is like. The young ladies are very thoroughly looked after, especially at examination time. Besides the superintendent has taken a fancy to me, she invents all sorts of pretexts for coming into my room, and she strokes my hand: I loathe being touched.’

Mathieu was scarcely listening to her: he knew that she was not thinking of what she was saying. Ivich shook her head with an air of irritation.

‘The old party at the hostel likes me because I’m fair. But it makes no difference, she’ll detest me in three months: she’ll say I’m sly.’

‘So you are,’ said Mathieu.

‘I daresay...’ she said in a drawling voice, which somehow seemed to go with her sallow cheeks.

‘And in the end everyone notices how you hide your cheeks, and drop your eyes, as though butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth.’

‘Oh well, I suppose you like people to know what sort of person you are,’ she added with a faint contempt. ‘It’s true you aren’t susceptible to that sort of thing. And as for looking people in the face,’ she went on, ‘I just can’t do it. My eyes begin to smart at once.’

‘You used often to annoy me in early days,’ said Mathieu. ‘You used to look at me above the forehead, just at the level of the hair, and I’ve always been so nervous of getting bald... I thought you had noticed a thinning patch and couldn’t take your eyes off it.’

‘I look at everyone like that.’

‘Yes — or sideways: so...’

He flung a sly, quick glance at her. She laughed, amused and angry: ‘Stop! I won’t be imitated.’

‘I wasn’t being rude.’

‘No, but it frightened me to see you put on my expressions.’

‘I can understand that,’ said Mathieu, with a smile.

‘You don’t look as if you did. However handsome you were, the effect on me would be just the same.’ And she added in an altered voice: ‘I do wish my eyes didn’t hurt me so.’

‘Look here,’ said Mathieu. ‘I’ll go to a chemist and get you a cachet. But I’m waiting for a telephone call. If anyone asks for me, would you mind telling the commissionaire that I’ll be back in a few minutes, and that the caller is to ring again.’

‘No, don’t go,’ she said coldly. ‘Thank you very much, but nothing would do me any good, it’s the sun.’

They fell silent. ‘I’m getting bored,’ thought Mathieu with a strange, grinding thrill of pleasure. Ivich was smoothing out her skirt with the palms of her hands, lifting her fingers a little as though she were about to strike the keys of a piano. Her hands were always rather red, because she had a poor circulation: she usually held them up and waved them to make them pale. They scarcely served her to take hold of anything: they were two small crude idols at the extremities of her arms: they fluttered over the surfaces of objects, feeling their shapes, instead of picking them up. Mathieu looked at Ivich’s nails, long and tapering and loudly painted, almost in the Chinese manner. Indeed these awkward, fragile adornments made it plain that Ivich could make no use of her ten fingers. One day, one of her nails had dropped off by itself, she kept it in a little casket, inspecting it from time to time with a blend of disgust and satisfaction. Mathieu had seen it: it had retained its varnish, and looked like a dead beetle. ‘I wonder what is on her mind: never have I known her so tiresome. It must be her examination. Well, as long as she doesn’t get bored with me; after all, I’m a grown-up, so to speak.’

‘I suppose this isn’t how blindness starts,’ said Ivich suddenly, with a dispassionate air.

‘Certainly not,’ said Mathieu smiling. ‘You know what the doctor at Laon told you: you’ve got a touch of conjunctivitis.’

He spoke gently, he smiled gently: with Ivich it was essential to smile, and use slow, gentle gestures: ‘Like Daniel with his cats.’

‘My eyes hurt me so much,’ said Ivich. ‘The merest trifle is enough...’ She hesitated. ‘I... the pain is at the back of my eyes: right at the back. Wasn’t that the beginning of that nonsense you were telling me about?’

‘That affair the other day?’ asked Mathieu. ‘Look here, Ivich, last time it was your heart, you were afraid of a heart attack. What an odd little creature you are, you almost seem as if you wanted to torment yourself: and then another time you suddenly announce that you’re as hard as nails: you must make up your mind.’

His voice left a sugary taste in his mouth.

Ivich looked darkly at her feet.

‘Something must be going to happen to me.’

‘I know,’ said Mathieu; ‘your line of life is broken. But you told me you didn’t really believe in that sort of thing.’

‘No, I don’t really... But it is a fact that I just can’t picture my future. It’s a blank.’

She said no more, and Mathieu eyed her in silence. Without a future... suddenly he was conscious of a bad taste in his mouth, and he realized how deep was his attachment to Ivich. It was true that she had no future: Ivich at thirty, Ivich at forty, didn’t make any sense. There was nothing ahead of her. When Mathieu was alone or when he was talking to Daniel or Marcelle, his life stretched out before him, plain and monotonous: a few women, a few holidays, a few books. A long and gentle slope, Mathieu was moving slowly — slowly down it, indeed he often found himself wishing that the process could be speeded up. And suddenly, when he saw Ivich, he felt as though he were experiencing a catastrophe. Ivich was a voluptuous and tragic little embodiment of pain, which had no morrow: she would depart, go mad, die of a heart attack, or her parents would keep her close at Laon. But Mathieu could not endure to live without her. He made a timid movement with his hand: he longed to grasp Ivich’s arm above the elbow and squeeze it. ‘I loathe being touched.’ Mathieu’s hand fell back: and he said quickly: ‘That’s a very nice blouse you’re wearing, Ivich.’

It was a tactless remark: Ivich bent her head stiffly, and tapped her blouse with an air of constraint. She regarded compliments with disgust, they made her feel as though a rather blatantly alluring image of herself were being hacked out with a hatchet, and she was afraid of being deluded by it. She alone could think with due propriety about her own appearance. And she did so without the use of words, with a sort of affectionate certitude, a caress. Mathieu looked diffidently at Ivich’s slender shoulders, the straight, round neck. She often said: ‘I have a horror of people who are not conscious of their bodies.’ Mathieu was conscious of his body, but rather as though it were a large and embarrassing parcel.